IKEA TRADFRI on/off switch with ZHA using a lot of battery

Hi.

I have 4 IKEA TRADFRI on/off switches that i connect with zha.
The switch has a CR2032 coin cell battery. The battery last only a few weeks.

What can cause this?
Is ZHA polling the device for status, causing it to use all the battery ?
Is there something i can change ?

Running: Hass.io 0.117.6 on Ubuntu server

ikea tradfri on off

1 Like

Hello, i got same problem here. Battery lasted 4days now

2 Likes

The answer is really short.

Bad QC from the IKEA production line. Many people has similar problems, it doesn’t matter on the type/brand of battery. I have some last for months, one just died after a few days. It is just the bad quality of the on/off switch.

If that’s the case - why does the same switch lasts monts when connected to tradfri bridge, and only lasts days when connected to ZHA (e.g. SOnff bridge) ?

1 Like

I have the same issue here using IKEA tradfri 5-button remotes. Batteries lastet about one day.
Connection and functionality to ZHA via BitronVideo ZigBee Stick AV2010/20 (Silicon Labs Ember 3587) with Home Assistant OS 5.12 on rpi4B (supervisor 2012.02.11) was good, but short…

@kukumalu, There is another topic about this issue and if you look at the last posts, it seems to be that some work is ongoing to fix this issue with ZHA.

@ssy, @MattX you might be interested as well.

I have the same issue, I switched from zigbee2mqtt to ZHA and now 7 IKEA buttons are only lasting a week, they were fine on zigbee2mqtt for the past year, this is a ZHA issue or there is programming settings I don’t know about.

Mine last only 1.5 days

Same here, I had my Ikea remote control and another ikea on/off switch last months with Z2M, but since I switched to ZHA the remote control lasts for a week, and the on/off switch can barely survive for a day (I use the replacement cr2032 batteries from ikea), so can’t be a battery problem.

If any one found a solution please let me know

What firmware is loaded to switches?

I have 8 Tradfri switches connected via ZHA to unlocked Lidl SilverCrest coordinator. All switches have firmware 0x23079631 and to be honest I forgot when I replaced the batteries the last time, but for sure they last already couple of months. The lowest is at 74%, but I can see some of the switches don’t show the battery level in HA unless I use them ie. press the button.

I also have the 0x22010631 firmware, it’s maybe a problem with the sonoff zigbee bridge

Well, your firmware is older, I think. Maybe try to update the switches and see if it changes anything.

FYI, Zigbee has poor range and penetration plus is very sensitive to interference, so if devices have bad reception then they will need to resend messages over and over again which will drain batteries.

Following these general tips to set up an environment for reducing interference and increasing range:

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/pull/18864

and

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#best-practices-to-avoid-pairingconnection-difficulties

Please consider giving that PR on GitHub a thumbs up if you think tips should be added to ZHA docs.

Could that be related to misconfigured “clusters” like PollControl (like attr_reporting_status), as it looks like the buttons stay alive and report status unlike with Z2M.

In the same boat here.
Tradfri On / Off switch connected via ZHA. Looking at the reported battery before it died shows
the following step drop.

Anyone have any new information / solution to this ?

It is also happening to me. It started in the beginning of this year.

Using ZHA and HUSBZB-1 stick.

Doing some debug I saw that the controller always dies after sending a check-in event.

Two days ago I switched from Deconz + Conbee II to ZHA + Sonoff 3.0 Dongle. Already 3 of my 5 Five Button IKEA Hockey pucks are now dead. And even after deleting them, replacing the battery and readopt in ZHA they still won´t work. Battery shows 255%.

I have three TRADFRI Shortcut Buttons and had them running with a ConBee on ZHA for almost a year now. I switched to HomeAssistant’s Skyconnect and suddenly one of them (the one closest to the coordinator) started dying. Replaced the battery just two days ago and yesterday it reported a battery level of 16%. Today it completely died again. If people are observing the same as I do and it turns out to be an issue with the HUSBZB-1 (which Skyconnect seems to use also (?)), this could have a signficant impact on SkyConnect’s reputation.

1 Like

Did exactly the same as you

  • ConBee on ZHA (no problem with battery)
  • Skyconnect on ZHA (need to change battery all the time)

Update:

  • My problem seems to be connected to a batch of bad batteries. New battery pack and I do not see the problem any more.